BlackBerry Z30 specs and release date confirmed

BlackBerry has officially taken the wraps off the rumoured BlackBerry Z30 smartphone, which features a 5-inch display.

The BlackBerry Z30 is available SIM-free from today. We already know Carphone Warehouse has the Z30 available for well over £500, but punters after a cheaper deal will be pleased to know there plenty of other –– cheaper –– options out there.

Unlocked-Mobiles.com currently has the BlackBerry Z30 available for £474.98 including VAT. Expansys has the device listed for £484.99. The BlackBerry Z30 runs the latest version of BB10 –– BlackBerry 10.2 –– and features the largest display ever fitted to a ‘berry handset.

The 5-inch display is Super AMOLED, but BlackBerry is yet to reveal any further details on resolution or pixel density, saying only that it gives a “larger, clearer and more vivid” image. Likewise the processor gets a limited description as a 1.7GHz chip with a quad-core graphics processing unit (GPU). BlackBerry has consistently used Qualcomm architecture since it launched BlackBerry 10 so some kind of Snapdragon chip seems likely.

BlackBerry has just confirmed that the Z30 uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset. Just like the BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 before it.

The Canadian manufacturer also revealed a number of other features of its “biggest, fastest and most advanced smartphone,” including some new antenna hardware, which allegedly gives better connectivity even in areas with low signal. The audio capabilities have also been highlighted with something called BlackBerry Natural Sound to boost audio quality and stereo speakers for multimedia.

The battery is a 2,880mAh unit which BlackBerry says is the biggest it has put in any of its phones to date and between this larger cell and optimisations to the software, BlackBerry suggests you’ll be able to get 25 hours on a single charge with “mixed use.”

BlackBerry has also tweaked the BlackBerry Hub with a new component – the BlackBerry Priority Hub, which can learn your most frequently used contacts across email, social networking, calls and messages and present them to you in any easy-to-access hub.

“The new BlackBerry Z30 smartphone builds on the solid foundation and engaging user experience of the BlackBerry 10 platform with features like the powerful BlackBerry Hub, its exceptional touchscreen keyboard and industry leading browser,” said Carlo Chiarello, executive vice president of products at BlackBerry.

“The smartphone rounds out the BlackBerry 10 portfolio and is designed for people looking for a smartphone that excels at communications, messaging and productivity. Having apps like the full Documents To Go suite that comes preinstalled, together with its 5-inch touch display, the BlackBerry Z30 smartphone gives you a best in class productivity experience on the go.”

BlackBerry is yet to announce pricing details but has said the BlackBerry Z30 will hit carriers and retailers in the UK as early as next week, so expect to hear about prices and tariffs from major UK industry types very shortly.

BlackBerry 10.2 will also be rolling out to existing BlackBerry 10 handsets, including the BlackBerry Z10, BlackBerry Q10 and BlackBerry Q5 from mid-October, “subject to carrier approvals.”

The BlackBerry Z30 has been pictured next to the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q5, showing its enormity.

5 Aug 2013

BlackBerry Z30 and BlackBerry Z15 press shots leak

If recent reports are correct the handset we’ve come to know as the BlackBerry A10 will be known as the BlackBerry Z30 once it is officially launched. Tipped as the follow-up to 2013’s BlackBerry Z10, the Z30 will apparently launch alongside a slider-handset known as the BlackBerry Z15, although this latter device has now been proven to be a concept and not a final build of the device.

24 Jul 2013

BlackBerry A10 with Galaxy S4-sized display leaks online

The BlackBerry A10 has leaked online in a series of photos and a 3-minute video, confirming many of the handset’s features and specs as well as giving us a fairly detailed look at the overall design changes BlackBerry has implemented.

Vu Thanh posted the images on Twitter, illustrating the BlackBerry A10’s larger display and curved back panel, ahead of a detailed video (courtesy of Tinhte) that appeared on YouTube shortly after. Taken together they form a pretty empirical picture of the BlackBerry A10.

The A10’s overall design appears to be softer than the angular BlackBerry Z10 and while the BlackBerry 10.2 update is just around the corner, neither the video nor the images show anything new with regards to BlackBerry 10.

16 Jul 2013

BlackBerry A10 back panel pictured with BlackBerry Z10

Pictures of the BlackBerry A10’s back panel have leaked again but this time show the larger phone’s rear cover alongside its smaller BlackBerry Z10 cousin.

As well as offering a sense of scale, the pictures show how much both devices have in common in terms of design language – they’re largely the same except the BlackBerry A10 is more rounded, both at the corners and the camera port. Another feature shown off in the snaps is the BlackBerry A10’s use of the same ‘Glass Weave’ material seen on the BlackBerry Q10. We can say from our time with the BlackBerry Q10 that this stuff has a really nice feel to it in the hand.

The images emerged via Chinese social network Weibo and at the same time we’ve also seen a leak of an official BlackBerry A10 document detailing the full spec.

16 Jul 2013

BlackBerry A10 detailed in leaked spec sheet

A BlackBerry document has leaked detailing the spec line-up for the forthcoming BlackBerry A10, confirming many of the rumoured features and hardware for the device.

Earlier rumours pointed to a dual-core processor, which many supposed was a Qualcomm setup, owing to the presence of the chip-maker’s hardware inside previous BlackBerry 10 handsets. This has been proven to be true, as the leaked spec details a dual-core Snapdragon Pro (MSM8960) chip clocked at 1.7GHz with built-in 4G LTE and HSPA+ 3G connectivity and the also rumoured 2GB of RAM.

The 5-inch display is listed simply as OLED, rather than the rumoured Super AMOLED, but this doesn’t rule out the use of the more advanced tech. As per rumoured specs it has a 1280x720 pixel HD resolution at 295 pixels-per-inch (ppi). BlackBerry 10.2 is confirmed to be onboard and the phone has 16GB of internal storage plus microSD support for cards up to 64GB.

The rear-facing primary camera is an 8-megapixel setup with an LED flash and ‘IS’ would appear to indicate image stabilisation, which we’d expect to be digital, though we may yet be pleasantly surprised. A front-facing secondary is rated at 2-megapixels.